REVIEW: UGLY AMERICANS “MARK LOVES DICK”

Episode Synopsis: Callie gets a promotion by turning herself into a man, forcing Mark to reassess their relationship, which is tested by a dangerous mission to the underwater city of Atlantis. Original Air Date: Apr 4, 2012
Guest Cast Jon Benjamin Ed Helms

Spoilers Below

The Department of Integration needs a new ambassador to the city of Atlantis. As it turns out, the once thought doomed city is responsible to fight of a sea-dwelling Kraken in exchange for free pizza. Callie decides to throw her hat in the ring, but everyone with the exception of Mark laugh her ass out of the room because shes a chick and not a dude. Trying to be the supportive boyfriend, Mark puts together a rally to try and get Callie the job, but its here we learn that Callie got sexual reassignment surgery to where now Callie is known as a guy named Dick. Marks not cool with it at first because well… now hes dating a dude and there’s a lot to take in when you find out your dating a dude most noteworthy being a penis. However, after taking the night to think about it Mark actually buys into Callie being a dude and decides to give it a shot by spending the next 6 months together in Atlantis.

Turns out, everyone in Atlantis is gay, and the king even tries hitting on Mark. Luckily, Dick sees this as an opportunity to have Mark help out in a secret mission to make sure that the ocean water stays completely dirty around Manhattan. The plan is  Mark gets to go  over to the palace and grease up the king’s ummm royalty, while Dick goes all Mission Impossible to find the mainframe that controls a large drain plug that would threaten to clean the water surrounding NYC.

While Mark and Dick are in Atlantis, the local citizens send up a dead body with Mark’s clothes, leading Grimes, Twayne, Randall, and Leonard to believe that Mark is dead. After robbing him, they battle it out to determine who is Marks best friend. However, after they destroy the boat, the guys think that being Marks friend is overrated and should instead try and avenge Mark’s death instead of fighting over it. Their first fight? The dreaded KRAKEN! But, leave it to the crazy mo-fos to actually team up with the Kraken to come and destroy Atlantis. As a last ditch effort to stay alive the king orders the drain to be unplugged but it gets clogged with the Kraken and Callie returns back to NYC as a lady but with some added hardware.

I love Jon Benjamin, he always does a great job and tonight was no different but he was almost TOO good. Like, Archer good. To the point that with all of Dick’s sexual advances towards Mark(albeit gay) I kept thinking Archer. This isn’t a bad thing, but I was kind of hoping Jon would’ve gotten a different type of character role than the one he is not only accustomed to but also the one he us probably best known for. Shit, the writers even put in a top secret/undercover mission! Ed Helms on the other hand was really funny, and I thought he did a great job as the king. There were also quite a few humorous tidbits throughout the episode, like Randall blatantly robbing Mark’s ‘corpse’, Mark being stuck with greasing up both the king and Twayne, and the fact that the DOI were able to team up with the Kraken to try and wage a war against a city that no one thought existed! I actually thought Augenblick’s depiction of Atlantis was very well done, and totally fitting of what you would expect the underworld would look like opposite an alternate universed NYC. Overall, a solid episode even if not risk taking on the voice end of it.

 (8.0 out of 10)